188 Declutter Your Home & Mind: Expert Tips from Katy Wells

In fostering a balanced and orderly work-life environment, it is important to understand the correlation between physical clutter and mental well-being. Cluttered spaces tend to have a detrimental effect on productivity and focus, causing individuals to feel stressed and overwhelmed.

An organized home allows for clearer thinking, reduced stress levels, and improved mood, enabling people to concentrate on more important aspects of life like their careers, hobbies, and personal relationships. During our conversation on today's show, decluttering expert Katy Wells highlights the impact of physical possessions on an individual's mental health. She explains that when a home is cluttered and chaotic, it leads to feelings of stress and reduced productivity.

According to Katy, the key to creating a harmonious environment is to remove unnecessary items from one's life, leaving only what truly matters, thus resulting in maximized time and energy.

In today's episode, tune to learn how to:
1. Enhance mental clarity, and productivity, and reduce stress through decluttering.
2. Develop sustainable decluttering habits with daily resets and clutter audits.
3. Instill organization skills in children using the effective LAP (Look, Assess, Place) method.

Connect with Katy more by tuning into her podcast The Maximized MInimalist or following her on Instagram @katyjoywells.

Also mentioned in the episode is Katy's 14-day challenge. Sign up here: https://katyjoywells.idevaffiliate.com/101-3.html

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

00:00:00 - Megan Sumrell - Hey there. If you have been a longtime listener here at the Work + Life Harmony podcast, you already are familiar with the incredible Katy Wells. If you are new, you are in for a treat. Katy is my go-to for absolutely everything when it comes to decluttering and really having an organized yet functional and happy home. So I've had her again. I've had her on the podcast before and today day, I'm really excited to have her back again, sharing some more incredible tips with you. My biggest takeaway I want you guys to listen to is when she starts talking about taking a lap lap around your room. So let's go ahead and jump in. Welcome to the Work Life Harmony podcast. I'm your host, Megan Sumrell. I'm the creator of the top program and top planner, teaching all things time management, organization and productivity for women. I'm also a mom and wife, and just like you, I'm juggling hashtags all the things while running multiple businesses and a family. Guess what? You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted and stressed out. There is another way. When you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time, you can live a life of harmony. This is your show to learn from me and other amazing women how to master your time, planning and organization to skyrocket your productivity so you can have Work + Life Harmony. If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you. And if you're new here, I'd love to get you started with my Work + Life Harmony assessment. All you have to do is DM me on Instagram @MeganSumrell with the word Harmony and my team will send it right over. All right, everyone, welcome back to the Work + Life Harmony podcast. I have a repeat guest here that I was thinking the other day. I'm like, I could probably just have you on every single week, Katy, and we would never run out of things about. So if you've been following the podcast for a while, you already are familiar with the amazing Katy Wells. But I'm going to let her introduce herself here in a minute. But one of the reasons why I love to have Katy on often is, and this is what we're going to talk about some today, is just the relationship of getting your life, your mental stuff, your calendar, your time, get back in control of that, feel like you're in the driver's seat, owning it. And the relationship between that and then the physical, getting that cleaned up, organized back on top of all of that. And so Katy is my go to expert for all things physical organizational because of the amazing thoughtfulness that Katy has in the actual brain science and what's going on in between our ears as it relates to the physical stuff that we're working on getting cleaned up as well. So, Katy, why don't you introduce yourself, tell everybody about you if they're not familiar with you, and then we'll get started.

00:02:54 - Katy Wells - So hello, everyone. Thanks so much for that lovely introduction. Oh, my goodness. I need to hang out with you more often. Yes, every week. Sounds good. I feel so good. So nice to be here in front of your listeners. In short, I am a declutter expert. For the last several years, I've coached hundreds of thousands of people to declutter their homes in a sustainable way. That is practical, it's approachable, it's realistic, whether you are a mom of ten, a mom of one, a mom of none, a mom of fur babies, right. And anything in between. And it's just been so profound to help people clear out their physical space because that equates to a clear mind, which I know we're going to be talking about today. And I have a unique story, which, in short, I think a lot of people tend to and this was me roll their eyes when they hear from a declutter expert or organization expert like, oh, she must have been born that way. Must be easy for her. And I went through my own a very long, tumultuous journey with decluttering and my relationship with stuff. So I think being able to surpass a lot of those roadblocks that so many people have, the majority of us have. Right. And be able to bring that to the table when I'm coaching people really gives me a unique edge. And I just love helping people. Also just dial into the roots of the clutter, because it's one thing to get clutter out of your house, but if you never focus on the inflow of things and why it's there to begin with. It's like having a canoe going on a canoe ride in the lake and having a leak in your boat, but only focusing on getting the water out instead of finding the leak and clogging the leak so you can get back to enjoying your canoe ride. Right? We want to enjoy the canoe ride. Yeah. So super excited to talk with you again on this conversation with simplifying our home so we can simplify our life.

00:04:39 - Megan Sumrell - Yeah. One of the things I love about just some similarities between you and I is when you openly talk about your own journey with clutter and people will meet me and just assume, oh, you've always had your stuff together with time management. I'm like, Actually, my mom always said that I would have been a gold medalist in procrastination and hoarding as a young child and young adult. So I'm like, believe me, I've been there. I get it. And so I know whenever I go to look for an expert or someone to get help from for me, I always struggle a little bit. And I don't mean to generalize, but just as an example, to go follow a fitness guru when you've seen photos of them their entire life and they're just naturally could eat anything and you're just kind of like, do you really know what it's like? Can you really help me? Can you really be there? So that's why I love that you're sharing this. And plus, you've got how old are your kids right now?

00:05:30 - Katy Wells - They are now six and eight.

00:05:32 - Megan Sumrell - Okay. So you're still in what I would consider the trenches of you could have an onslaught of stuff coming in, and so you are using these every day, which I think also what I appreciate about the tips that you share is because you're still in the trenches, living it every day. You're kind of staying on top of the trends of what's happening to help us avoid that. One of the things I thought would be interesting to get your take on today, I find when people find me and are coming to me because they want help with getting their time under control, they either have both their time and their physical a little bit out of control, and they're starting with their time. And once their calendar gets under control, now, they get really motivated to say, okay, now I'm looking at my physical space. I'm always like, Go see Katy, or they've already worked with you. They're like, okay, now I'm ready to tackle my calendar. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on that kind of relationship that we have with both. Once we start clearing up one part of our life, how then that gets us motivated to do the other, but specifically, that relationship between our physical stuff and then the mental load of everything that we are trying, particularly as moms, to keep account of in our head.

00:06:49 - Katy Wells - So one of my favorite pastimes, and this is in the last few years, is I love geeking out over studies on Clutter. This isn't something that always used to be studied, and this isn't something certainly, that I was aware of even 510 years ago. I think a lot of us can relate as parents or caregivers or women and men. It literally doesn't matter if you walk into a Cluttered home at the end of a busy day or anytime. If you walk into a friend's home and there's stuff everywhere, again, no judgment, no shame. If you walk into a crazy Cluttered spot, studies show it raises our stress hormone cortisol and how that impactful that can be when we go about the rest of our days, how that impacts our mood, our behavior, our choices, right? Maybe you lose patience with a loved one and get a little upset. There's so many ways that impacts us, and that could be at your workspace, too. If you are sitting at a Cluttered workspace, there are studies that show it decreases your productivity, it decreases your focus. You have too much visual stimulus in your area, whether that's, again, your bedroom, your workspace, your living room, your kitchen. And one of the newer studies that most people haven't heard of is that by spending time in a cluttered kitchen, you are more likely to binge eat junk food and watch Netflix. I was like, wow, that's very specific. I guess one thing leads to another, and it's very true. It's like this domino effect that really it all begins within our physical environments. And, like, I didn't have any clue how intricately connected we are to our environments. And our environments influence our thoughts, actions, behaviors, like I mentioned. And so when we can clear some stuff again, the end goal with me and what I teach is never perfection. It's just simpler. It's just striving for a home that's easy to tidy, not always tidy. Okay, so when we remove and drop the perfection and that perfect after photo that a lot of us seek out for initially. First of all, what a breath of fresh air and less mental clutter. And there's freedom in that. But just taking little steps along the way to simplify, you will immediately notice an impact and a lift in your mood. You'll have more time and energy. In fact, there's a study that shows by decluttering your home, you can save up to 40% of your time in household chores. And so I did the math. I looked up studies on how long the average person does chores each week. So for women, it's a little bit more than men. Maybe that'll change one day. But with the math, it's over. An hour a day saved. Megan, an hour a day. Think about especially your audience, what they would do with an hour a day. And I can say, being in the maintenance side of clutter, it doesn't mean I wipe my hands and I'm like, clutter free. No. Like you said, I'm still in the trenches. I'm still a human who makes mess and who brings things into my home. And I have other little humans. But an hour a day, I do so much more with my time. I hang out with my family. I say no to chores. I put them on the back end. They are no longer a priority because everything's so much easier. I read, I listen to podcasts. I work for fun. I take walks. I take hikes and picking up new hobbies and things. And years ago, I never would have thought that was possible. I was very close to resigning myself to, well, I guess this is life. Hating my home, living every day in Groundhog Day, feeling depressed, anxious, and not really understanding, that a big root reason for that was the physical clutter in my house. So I think having these conversations and bringing more awareness, whether it's through data or studies or research out there, is really important for all of us to do.

00:10:32 - Megan Sumrell - Yeah. And when you say an hour a day and the only reason I know this off the top of my head, it's not because I'm like a mental calculator. One of the things that I have seen the results of with when you master more of the comprehensive weekly planning that I teach is that you start to free up 2 hours a day of your time, which ultimately maps out to a month every year. When you're telling me an hour a day, that's adding two more weeks of time. I mean, that's massive, right? And so when we start to think about all these little things we can put into place that ultimately give us our time back, our life back, to do the things that, like you said, you're starting new hobbies. I've shared I picked up cello lessons for the first time last December. Like, I'm playing with cello every day now. And the impact that that has on our lives and everybody that we live with now, you said something. I didn't tell you we were going to talk about this, but as soon as you said it, I was like, oh, I've been dying to get your thoughts on this. So when you said the end goal is not perfection, just a couple of months back, marie Kondo shared that she herself is now stepping back from her own methods. And I am still a fan of Marie Kondo with a lot of just the fact that she brought, I think, the importance of simplification and decluttering to a lot of things. I still like the idea of does it spark joy? That has helped me release some things that I was holding on to because I should, not because I wanted to. But one of the things, a key part of her method that I really always struggled with was she said, no, this is about perfection, and it's about all at once that always really hindered me into starting down, going that full road. So I'm curious your thoughts on kind of this newfound approach that she is now sharing that, no, she too is not able to do that. And if you have any kind of nuggets of why you think that is I mean, I've shared mine of just, I think, the reality of she added yet another child to her family. At some point, we run out of time, right? Yeah.

00:12:38 - Katy Wells - So it's interesting. So Marie Kondo now has three young children. And first of all, I applaud her for so she had this conversation with this journalist, and this article went viral. So that's what Megan's referring to. So you can look it up for all the listeners out there, where basically, she shares in a nutshell, that she's really realized, especially after having her third child, that her priorities when it comes to home management are shifting. And keeping up with her kind of perfectionistic. Methods of always striving for a home that's always tidy, which brings its own stress, its own anxiety, its own pressure. In my opinion, she's been able to release that and instead be like, hey, listen, this is my season in life. I've got three young kids. Instead, it's about, like, my motto has always been, the chores can wait. The kids come first. Embrace the mess.

00:13:26 - Megan Sumrell - Right?

00:13:27 - Katy Wells - Because mess doesn't always equate to inadequacy, which I think a lot of us feel or clutter. Right? It has to be connection, laughter, play, imagination, creation. There's so much beauty in mess, and even if it's just dirty dishes, that was a time you had to connect over the kitchen table or kitchen island with your family. So I was really impressed that she, first of all, shared that, because she could have easily been like, no, I'm doing great. These methods are still the way to go. So I kind of felt vindicated. I think maybe a lot of other people out there are like, oh, this is great. This is why this method maybe didn't align with me for other categories of things. And all at once in the perfectionistic tendency, she's just ready to surpass and focus on her family.

00:14:17 - Megan Sumrell - Yeah, okay. Thank you for letting me ask that. I was like, I wanted to talk to you about that. So for folks that are at a season of life where they're kind of looking around their physical surroundings and saying, I want to make a change, I'm starting to feel that heaviness of stuff and things. Where do you typically start, people? Because sometimes it can be so overwhelming, it's kind of like I don't even know where to start.

00:14:41 - Katy Wells - Yes, that's so true. So really, we start with two simple habits. Two simple habits, and they take not long at all. One of them takes less than two minutes, and the other one takes as long as it needs to in your house. But in a nutshell, the two habits are daily resets, which I know I've talked to you in your community, so.

00:14:58 - Megan Sumrell - Glad you bring that up.

00:15:00 - Katy Wells - Daily resets are great. So in a nutshell, they are when you tackle an expected mess hotspot. So not necessarily a clutter hotspot, but expected mess is mess. That happens from everyday life, right? Stuff on the kitchen counters, laundry waiting to be put away, et cetera, et cetera. I typically recommend always doing these in the kitchen at least once a day, but usually after meals, so it can be one to three times a day. And the idea behind that is you put everything back where it belongs. You completely tidy up the space and clear the surface areas of anything that doesn't belong there permanently. And it prevents the mess and getting overwhelming, building up, and then procrastination kicks in, and next thing you know, you spend an entire Saturday scrubbing away dishes with, like, dried food on there that's been on there for a week and it's been so fruitful. And I think what's great about this habit is that when you do these resets and you start putting things back in the shelves and in the cabinets where they should have been put to begin with, you can also identify clutter easier. We don't really want to find a home for clutter. So if you struggle, if you're doing your daily resets in your kitchen for a week straight and you're moving this thing from pile to pile to pile and you're like, I don't know what to do with this. So find a home for it. If it really deserves space in your house or it's clutter and just get rid of it. And so I think on the flip side, it's easy to identify clutter. And then that second habit to attach to the daily reset habit are clutter audits. So these are basically very micro declutter sessions where you attach to a daily reset. So it's a household chore you're already doing, whether it's a reset or just putting laundry away or whatever. We all do these things whether we're consistent with them or not. We all do hundreds of things around our house every single day. These are hundreds of opportunities. We can take 5 seconds here, 10 seconds here, 15 seconds here to get rid of a few things at a time. Now, this is going to be really hard for anyone who has a perfectionistic tendencies and who wants it all right.

00:17:00 - Megan Sumrell - Now, or pantry or get it, or.

00:17:03 - Katy Wells - I want to spend an entire weekend doing this, or I don't feel productive, right? We have to move past that. And really what we're doing here with these two simple habits is you're mastering the art of showing up. You can't start decluttering at 20 minutes a day if you can't even do two. So finding these little moments where you're doing quick audits is this clutter? Yes. Get rid of it. Add it to a permanent donation bin you have that's visible and easily accessible. It's an invitation to be filled. And if you have a spot that's clear and marked in your home for all of that stuff, you don't have to wait for like a weekend or 6 hours to pop out of nowhere all of a sudden on your calendar, which won't happen, right? In the meanwhile, the clutter builds and your stress builds and clutter is stealing your time and energy and so much more. So those are the two habits I would recommend starting. And then once you get those in place and you're pretty consistent with it, again, consistency doesn't mean perfection. Then you can increase time and start. Really what you're doing here is also building your declutter muscle. And some people kind of chuckle when I say that, but it's true. It's like you can't go squat, try and squat £300 at the gym if you've never squat 50. And I mean, I work out, so I use a lot of exercise analogies, but the same thing applies with our brain. We have to start with the easier stuff. Don't tackle the sentimental stuff. I know people always have questions about those things, but you need to tackle the other layers that are going to be easier for you. And you're going to build that declutter muscle, which is your brain, and create momentum that leads into tackling the tougher stuff.

00:18:37 - Megan Sumrell - That's so good. And one of the things so I had never done the Daily Resets until you had introduced that to me. And I want to tell you one of the biggest wins I've had from the Daily Reset, we don't have like a mud room or a place where we're walking in for stuff to get dropped. So what that translates into is like in this one corner of the family room, we have these two chairs and a table. So my daughter sometimes even outside. My husband is not a messy person, but he's a hoarder. But everything's very neat and space. That's an interesting one. But I mean, my daughter will just come in and dump, right? So we come in from violin lesson. There's violin, everything goes right there. And before Daily Resets, I would literally be fighting, losing my proverbial you know what all the time because I felt like it was nonstop all day long. Wait, let's put it could you put yourself whereas now that we've established our resets, both for us, it's really boiled down to the kitchen and the family room is when I see that happen in the moment. Now, I'm not angry because I'm like, but we're going to have our reset right after dinner and I know all of this is going to be cleared up. And so I've stopped being I hate to use the word nag, but everyone does it anyway. But I feel like it's helped free up just some tension and constant back and forth with my daughter at kind of this tween stage of where I can relax and let some stuff go throughout the day because we now as a family, have these reset times where that's the expected thing. After dinner, then I can say, okay, we're resetting the living room, go put all your stuff back where it goes. And so I feel like it's given freedom for each member of our family to have those kind of times where they just need to come in and kind of flop for a minute or whatnot without me with my anxiety building up. And so that has been a huge win of having those resets. I feel like I've relaxed a lot more. And then also, I think with the to your second point, I'm curious to hear how you do this with your kids. My daughter is one that really does not like to she's inherited that from me and my husband, I think, the hoarding, because I was one who didn't want to ever throw away anything and understanding the difference of the sentimental versus the stuff. And so I've really avoided a lot of the things that I know might have sentimental things with her as we're working on kind of strengthening her decluttering muscle and trying to do it with things that I know aren't super meaningful so that she's getting comfortable with letting things go. But I would love to get your thoughts on how often do you go through decluttering with your own children? Is it a daily, a weekly, or just kind of when things start to feel too big?

00:21:22 - Katy Wells - So I'm going to give you and your listeners an acronym. I don't know if I've shared this with you, but it's something I teach in one of my master classes in my Clutter Club membership. So a few years back, I was like, how can I get my kids to do basically these daily resets and clutter audits, right? The whole kitten caboodle daily ish, but pretty consistently. And so the Lap method is the daily reset. So I started having them do this Lap method in the play space, which at the time was in our living space because I didn't have a separate playroom. So that's really where the mess was made. But now that they're older and there's less toys in the house, they do these daily resets in their bedroom. So Lap stands for it's an acronym, and the L in the Lap stands for look around. So I teach my sons, my child students, my adult students start on surface areas. So start on the floor. You're going to look around. You're going to look on the floor, you're going to look on the bed nightstand. We'll keep up with the bedroom example, and you're going to look for things that don't belong. Do you remember those books when we were kids? Like, find the thing that doesn't belong, right? And there's someone in an astronaut suit or someone in a ski suit. So that's kind of what inspired me to I'm like, okay, let's look for things like put on your detective glasses. What doesn't belong here permanently? And then the A is assess. So is this clutter? So this is where we can talk about is this clutter? Well, what is clutter? Clutter is something that we don't use, we don't love, we don't need, we don't want it anymore. Maybe it doesn't fit. So that happens a lot with kids, and maybe we're just not interested anymore because our kids interests constantly change. My son was super into baseball three weeks ago, and now he's super into football. And it's not to say we get rid of all things baseball related, but slowly, over time, we'll start to purge some of that out. Is it something I want to I use regularly, I wear, I look forward to using if. So I need to put it back where it belongs. It doesn't belong out on the surface area, where's the home for it. And then that leads to P, which is place back. So you put it back where it belongs if you want to keep it. If it is clutter and it's something you don't want anymore, you put it in a donation bin. So I have small donation bins inside my son's closets for that purpose. And so I just say, hey, I don't even say do a daily reset. I go, go take a lap in your bedroom. And so I think the kids kind of like that, right? They can set a timer, they can turn on some music, they can compete. And that's always fun. That's a fun way to kind of gamify it. And they'll get rid of sometimes more than you think you'd be surprised after. Again, it takes consistent coaching, but it's really, really a powerful thing. So the lap method is what we've been using. And again, I love the combination of you're not just throwing dirty like when my mom used to tell me to clean my room, I found everything, including all my dirty clothes, and threw them inside my closet floor and was like, okay, I'm done, right?

00:24:19 - Megan Sumrell - Move the mess and move the mess.

00:24:21 - Katy Wells - And hide it, shove it under my bed. Hope she didn't notice so I could go to my friend's house, which was the reward. So this really does take helping them build the skills, modeling, that is always really helpful. But when you can combine these resets with letting go, it's not so like, again, the mess doesn't get overwhelming to do the resets. And it's these consistent opportunities to take a few seconds and go, oh, I don't know. And then sometimes I'll go in and kind of coach like, oh, I noticed you put this back, and I noticed you haven't worn that in six months, or whatever. And then I'm never really pressuring them to let go. I just say what I notice. It's kind of like being like, I don't know, like the football announcers like, hey, this person did this. And then that gives them an opportunity to go, oh, yeah, you know what? I don't need that, or whatever, mom, I'll do that. Maybe I'll think about it. But it's been really profound and it's just super simple. The acronyms easy to remember and they love it.

00:25:18 - Megan Sumrell - Oh, no. I am already obsessed with thinking about how we're going to put this into our life as well. And one of the things I think that's so important with that is I think I always believed that you were either born just a naturally organized person or not just as people. Oh, you're either born being good at managing your time or not. And I always knew, no, that's not true. I know that's a teachable thing because I needed to be taught that, but I never realized the importance of teaching our children how to clean and how to organize, right? And so that's one of the things I want to thank you for, is you've really shed that light on kind of myself and our family and realizing I can't just expect her to know how to organize her room because she's never been taught those skills. And so we've now been putting a lot. Of stuff in place, but I'm definitely going to be doing the take a lap around your room. I know that's going to resonate really well and that's a much nicer way that I'm currently handling it, which is, do I need to go up and take a look in there? So I think that this sounds a lot better. Now, I know you have helped thousands upon thousands and I'm not making this number up. You literally have helped thousands of people over how many years now have you been doing this?

00:26:27 - Katy Wells - Almost five.

00:26:28 - Megan Sumrell - Okay. Yeah. There's a reason why your podcast is over a million downloads, all of that. And given the thousands of people that you've helped for as many years as you have, what do you see as like the big success factors for the people that come into you, meet you, come into your programs, you want to go all in. What are the differences that set people up for success to establish and maintain this versus not?

00:26:58 - Katy Wells - That's such a good question. I would say by far the takeaways would be this if you want success 99% of the time, this is what I see. It always plays true, is that the people who see success, they reach the finish line of having an uncluttered home, reclaiming their time and energy and so they can focus on what matters most is it boils down to what I call the three C's. So another acronym, because I love acronyms, they're so fun. They make you remember they spark joy. Yeah. The first one is coaching. So like me, I didn't have a coach. And when you don't have a support system and I find this often when someone comes into my world, they're not necessarily being supported, they're the spearhead of decluttering and simplification and home management and systems and all these things in their house. They feel the pressure, they take most of that burden. But maybe a partner doesn't understand or the kids are too little. The kids can't really help much or aren't helping much. And so it feels so isolating. And so when you have the support of a coach to answer your questions, when you get stuck, that is so profound. I had a million and one questions on my journey and I so wish I would have had answers or someone to reach out to really quickly to get those questions answered. So I can literally shortcut. Right. Would you rather take five years to declutter your home or two? I think all of us are like two or less, right? I want it tomorrow. It's not always realistic, but we want the shortcut and a coach can help do that. The next one is community. I think a lot of us really felt this in 2020 when we lost a lot of our communities, our in person communities. And that's what drove me to create my 14 day challenges because I do these live, I very easily could have put all of this content in an online course that you buy and say, here you go, download it and access it when you want it. But I was like, no, we need community now more than ever. And I think that remains the same three years later. Community is so important because we can borrow motivation, we can use them for accountability. On the days you wake up in the morning and don't feel like decluttering and get invalidation, yes.

00:29:04 - Megan Sumrell - Validation just feels good. Yes.

00:29:06 - Katy Wells - When you see other people in your community, what they're doing and how they're struggling, but yet they got their two or five or ten minutes in or their wins, you're like, oh, okay, game time. I'm setting my timer. I'm going to get five minutes in, and I'm going to continue making progress. Community is so powerful, and I think it's the most underrated, under talked about ways. And just like you have your incredible community for what you teach, it's so important. It's so important. And then the last one is consistency. If we do not do anything consistently, but especially decluttering and all these skills, we're talking about lap, daily resets, clutter audits. We are destined for a life where it's constantly one step forward, five steps back, one step forward, five steps back. And I lived in that space when it came to clutter for several years before I finally gained traction. But I had to first get better at being consistent. And so you need the right tools, the right strategies, and a lot of short term strategies don't necessarily apply to consistency. It's more like long term habit modification, lifestyle shifts, and it's the sprinkle of kind of like this magic combination of these three C's I felt, that has made the most powerful difference in success versus not success.

00:30:21 - Megan Sumrell - Oh, so good. And I'm thinking about how much more consistent I've been with our decluttering here at the house, and just keeping things tidy through what I've learned through you, especially the daily resets and even those micro ones. Just the other night, I almost sent you a message because I had three minutes, and I just cleaned up our Tupperware cabinet, and it just felt so good because that always needs that. But the old Megan would have been like, well, if I can't tackle all of these cabinets, I'm just not even going to start. Instead of I had three minutes, I made the most of it. And now that space is tidy, and then the next day, maybe it'll just be that drawer with the baking supplies in it, and that will get done. And recognizing there isn't, like, there's a finish line here. It's the skills and the tools. I've learned to keep things maintained without it feeling heavy. And it's just part of life. You really reframed all of how I think about keeping a tidier house and getting rid of stuff. So, personally, I just want to thank you so much for all that you have poured in here on the podcast into so many women that I've met who are in your community. So you mentioned that you do these live events. Do you have one coming up?

00:31:35 - Katy Wells - Yes. On Monday, May 15, we kick off the next live challenge. They are so fun. They bring so much energy to the table. And best of all, you get the three C's. So you are already teed up for a lot of success and so many tools and strategies to use beyond the 14 day challenge. And one thing I want to share with your listeners and just encourage everyone about, because sometimes it's like, oh, decluttering. It's like I don't have time, or it's one more thing for my to do list. I know you've heard the same thing when it's like, oh, I have to sit down and do these things that Megan's telling me. But what you and I both teach, it's not just spending time doing these things. We don't just tell people to do this just to do it right. You get a return on your investment. You get time back, you get energy back. And the time you put into Decluttering six months ago, six weeks ago, two days ago is still paying off. Today, it's still paying off. So I'm reaping the benefits of the work I put in ten years ago, five years ago, and last month versus like, hey, I'm just going to waste my night watching Netflix. And don't get me wrong, I love my Real Housewives and I have my guilt TV shows. I'm a normal person like everyone else, but I don't expect anything out of that except mild entertainment and maybe a little nausea from the drama, but I signed myself up for it. When we do these things, they add so much to our lives, and again, the dividend they pay is massive. And so sometimes we just need to reframe that going into what feels like a marathon, right? A lifetime's worth of stuff in your home. And it's like one step at a time, one step at a time. We can do this and we can do it with coaching, consistency, and the 14 day challenge.

00:33:12 - Megan Sumrell - Community, guys. And I've got a link to the challenge here in the show notes. I would 100% encourage you to do that. One of the things I think is your real secret weapon, and it's something I talk about a lot, is anytime you are looking to implement a kind of permanent change in our lives, is to make sure that you're finding someone that's teaching not a one time process, but repeatable systems that you can use for the rest of your life. Right? Anyone can come in and help you clean up your closet and take everything out and fold it all nicely and put it all back in there looking really nice. But it's not going to help you if you're not taught the things you do on the daily to keep it that way, because otherwise, five months from now, guess what? You're back in there doing that one time thing again. And so this is where I truly believe your superpowers lie, Katy, and are all the little repeatable systems and processes that you teach that help us maintain this instead of it becoming something. We're constantly feeling like we're just redoing the same thing every six months or a year because it's gotten out of control. So this is why I am such a huge fan of all that you do and tell everyone. Definitely go jump in on the 14 day challenge. You'll be so glad that you did. And also, where's the best place for everyone to get connected with you as well?

00:34:33 - Katy Wells - Oh, for sure, podcast. So the maximize minimalist. Come hang out with me there. I know a lot of your listeners already do. And YouTube, I started my YouTube channel last year. We have a lot of fun over there and we get goofy and we learn a lot together.

00:34:50 - Megan Sumrell - Well, thank you so much for coming back, Katy. It's always a pleasure when I get a chance to hang out with you.

00:34:55 - Katy Wells - Thanks, Megan.

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